Kiaps and the Panguna mine: the truth revealed

BY KEITH JACKSON

IN AUGUST 2007, former Bougainville District Commissioner Bill Brown MBE [pictured in 1968] wrote to the Department of Foreign Affairs in Canberra pointing point out a major error that had appeared in the book, Documents on Australian Foreign Policy, Australia and Papua New Guinea 1966 – 1969.

The book was composed largely of official documents and, very much like the Wikileaks cables of more recent times, allowed rare insights into the words and actions of Australian politicians and bureaucrats in the three or so years it covered.

But when Bill Brown read the book he was particularly struck by documents that covered the time he was serving his nation in colonial Bougainville.  It was a turbulent time and the role of the kiap in trying to educate people about what would happen to their land with the arrival of the Panguna copper and gold mine was a particularly difficult one.

There were about 20 kiaps directly involved with the establishment of the mine and, without exception, they were a voice of knowledge and reason in the face of corporate intransigence, academic insouciance and an Australian government driven by the desire to give PNG resource exploitation at all costs.

The views of these men is perhaps best articulated in an interview kiap Ross Henderson gave to Film Australia in 1969, when he said:

It did not surprise anyone that the Moronis were angry over the land situation. It is not just a block of dirt to them - it is part of the body and the soul. Their whole social system is based on land. The land is owned by the ancestors now dead, the present occupiers and by the unborn generations to come. The occupiers have the right to use the land, to lease, but not to destroy.

From as early as 1966 we have been telling all the villages as much as we knew of the project, and tried to put them into the picture …. It was difficult even for us to envisage what was going to happen. You can imagine how bewildering it must have been for the Moronis.

But many subsequent writers on those times, times which led to the bloody civil war in Bougainville that resulted in something like 20,000 deaths, compounding their lack of first hand research with a too easy acceptance of official documents, did the kiaps a great disservice.

The kiaps were blamed for things they did not do, and accused of doing things that, knowing what they knew, they would never have done.

So in 2007, so many years later, when Bill Brown saw the errors entrenched in the official documents of that earlier time, he decided to tackle Canberra and get the bureaucrats to address the errors and distortions of the documents.

The initial response from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade was encouraging:

You are quite correct in your analysis of the errors which flow from the mistaken heading to Document 307.  … Sir David, with whom I have friendly relations, has made me aware of the issue and we've come to an agreement on how to correct the record.

When we release these publications, we are aware that they will be carefully scrutinised and we do our best to make them accurate. But anything of this size and complexity will never be perfect. ... All this means that we need to be courageous enough to keep putting things into the public domain and also that we should be humble enough to welcome observations from our readers - and particularly from historical participants such as yourself.

Well, pretensions to accuracy, courage and gratitude were soon betrayed by the reality of a Department that would prefer to leave lies on the record than to admit error.  As Bill Brown writes in the paper Bougainville Texts - Some Flaws In The Shards, which you can download below:

In 2007, Sir David Hay was told that a clarification would appear in the next volume, to be published in a year or so, and that a correction would be put on the DFAT website in the immediate future.  Sir David waited, and he died. If he had not, he would still be waiting. Foreign Affairs updated their website, but made no correction and did not admit the error.

Even today, the Department is still promoting the book “Documents on Australian Foreign Policy, Australia and Papua New Guinea 1966 – 1969” as “a detailed record of the classified communications that informed and determined Australian policy in Papua New Guinea between 1966 and 1969.” There is no admission of error or flaw, and there is no correction.

“People have suggested that the Australian government has been niggardly in acknowledging the role played by kiaps,” writes Bill elsewhere.  Niggardly?  That’s putting it mildly.  The term I’d use is “bloody disgraceful”.

Anyway, you can read Bill Brown’s compilation here – an invaluable contribution to the history of a troubled island and a welcome clarification of the kiaps’ role in those years between the mid sixties and mid seventies when they did their level best for the people of Bougainville.

Best turned out to be not good enough, but the blame cannot be sheeted home to those 20 or so kiaps.  You’ve got to look a lot further south for that.

Download Some flaws in the shards by Bill Brown

Comments

[Michael Lorenz]

Hi John, I just came across your note.
You can contact me at mlorenz99@gmail.com.

[John Gordon-Kirkby]

John Gordon-Kirkby would like to make contact with Michael Lorenz. Can anyone help?

[Michael Lorenz]

I have just read Bill Brown's article on Bougainville.

A comment on this observation: ... Just into his third term, and with no CRA background, PO John Gordon-Kirkby should not have been involved in a similar operation. There was an incident, and he handled it. ...

That may be true, but he was there and he did handle the situation, no villagers got hurt and both of us (and the pilot) survived the incident.

[Michael Lorenz]

Ross Henderson was right when he says the Moronis had no clue about what was likely to take place at Panguna. Nobody did.

In 1966-67 I was working for CRAE [CRA Exploration] in and around Panguna collecting soil and rocks and so on. Myself and a few others ranged far and wide over the permit area so I can give you something of a view from the ground.

It would be true to say that at the time there was some apprehension in the air but the reputed hostility of the Moroni villagers was, in my experience, not in evidence.

The few times that we encountered each other they were friendly enough. But they were interested in what might happen and nobody could give a definitive answer. They, like everyone else were pretty much in the dark as to how the project might evolve.

At no time did I see anything to suggest that the kiaps or police acted dishonourably or against the interests of the villagers.

In my work on Bougainville I had extensive contact with two kiaps, Chris Warrilow and John Gordon-Kirkby. Both conducted themselves in a very competent and professional manner (as well as that Ross tells me that he to did a pretty good job too :-) ).

However I must say that, in my opinion, the Mining Warden's Court at Barapinang left a lot to be desired with their explanation of the mining laws which were the hot topic (thanks to American missionaries) amongst the villagers at that time.

They were of course interested in the financial aspects of the deal (anybody who has had the pleasure of spending time in a PNG village would know that most of the inhabitants are, above all, avid businessmen and women) and reassurances could have been more forthcoming without raising unrealistic expectations (remember that at the time nobody knew the outcome).

I could go on but suffice to say that the kiaps were not the problem ... and I might add that the company always went out of its way to try to create and maintain good relations with the villagers.

As far as I'm concerned, the roots of the tragedy lie elsewhere.

[Phil Fitzpatrick]

This document needs much wider distribution.

As other writers have noted, there are valuable lessons to be learned from Panguna but no one seems to have noticed (or doesn't want to listen).

I wonder what would have happened if Bougainvilleans had successfully seceded from PNG when they wanted?

It is also interesting to note the opinion that land tenure is not so much the issue and that environmental destruction is the key - people don't want their land destroyed.

Some of us have been preaching the same message in social mapping studies for years but to no avail.

The paper also demonstrates that some anthropologists can be very dangerous, they need to be taken with a grain of salt.

[Martyn Namorong]

The quote from Ross Henderson resonates with what I wrote in my recent article on development published by KJ.

"Development within the context of Goal Five must respect and safeguard this intimate relationship between the land and its people.

"We don’t own the land, it owns us. We are guardians of the land our forefathers fought to protect for our sake. There is no honour in not fighting to protect one’s land.

"Any activity that does not subscribe to these Five National Goals and Directive Principles is not development but bagarapment.

"That is why blood had to be spilt on Bougainville when people revolted against the destruction of the Mekamui – the sacred land, which is the source of everything."

What is development? Our source the sacred land
http://asopa.typepad.com/asopa_people/2011/11/what-is-development-our-source-the-sacred-land.html

[Bll Brown]

Keith - Congratulations and many thanks. Beautifully done.

A lot of people will get pleasure from your presentation and lead-in. Those that do not, should!

Only one correction, for the sake of accuracy: the caption on the Johnson photo. He was "soon to become Administrator" at the time.

And a personal view, not an argument with you or the article, but soon be advanced.

I do not believe that Panguna led to the civil war. It preceded it, it may have been a catalyst, but the root causes lay elsewhere.